David Raker 01 - Chasing the Dead (13 page)

In the mirror on the dresser, I could make out all of the bedroom. The bedside cabinets. Derryn’s books. Her plant. The bath, basin, shower. The door, and beyond it into the blackness of the hallway.

Nothing made a sound.

But then, suddenly, he was there.

A flash of red plastic skin. The toes of his boots, dark but polished, shining in the glow from the security light. More of the mask emerged from the hallway, as if it were consuming the darkness. The man stopped, scanned the room, his body turning. But he made no sound at all, even as he stepped further in.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. I couldn’t risk any noise. I had nothing to compete with a gun, and only one way to protect myself: make him believe I wasn’t home.

Another step.

He brought the gun up slightly, his finger wriggling at the trigger gently. It sounded like he was breathing in. Sniffing. Like a dog trying to pick up a trail. He glanced towards the dresser, into the mirror, seeming to look right at me. And then he moved. Past the bathroom. Along the edge of the bed.

I could smell something then. A horrible, degraded odour, like decaying compost, trailing the man as he moved. I swallowed, felt like I had to, just to try to get the smell out of my throat and nose. But the stench didn’t go away. It was coming off him like flakes of skin. I swallowed again, and again, and again, but couldn’t get rid of it.

The man in the mask bent slightly and scanned under the bed, then came up again and leaned forward

It took everything I had not to make a sound. Whoever was behind the mask had just crawled beneath my skin. Violated me. My wife. Our memories. A bubble of anger worked its way up through my chest, then fear cut across it as the man approached, the gun slightly raised in front of him. Faster, more determined, as if he suddenly realized where I was.

He stopped again in the doorway. Turned back. Scanned the bedroom a second time. Then he breathed in through the mask; a long, deep intake of air. As he breathed out, I could smell him again. His decay. His stink. I held my breath, desperate not to swallow. Desperate not to make a noise.

Eventually, he turned for the final time and headed out, across the hallway, into the spare bedroom. In the mirror, I watched the night swallow up his entire body – except for the mask. In the darkness, the red of the plastic never disappeared.

He scanned the room, the mask moving with him, left to right; one long, snake-like movement. When he was done, he did the same thing again, replicating the action exactly. Then, finally, he turned and stepped back into the half-light of the hallway, pausing,

Then, finally, he left.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking across at the door out of the room. It was open. Beyond was a living area, stripped of almost all decor. The only furniture he could see was a table in the middle, and a single chair pushed under it.

It was a trick. Had to be.

He tried to work out how long they’d kept him, how long he’d been waking in the middle of the night and staring into the corner of the bedroom. Two or three weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe more. And during that time the door had never been open.

But now it was.

He leaned forwards a little. He could make out more of the living area now: a second door to the right of the table, closed. A bookcase, empty, next to that. On top of the bookcase was a book. It had gold lettering on it, a Post-It note attached to the front.

A Bible.

Hesitating, he took another couple of steps forward, into the living area. The floorboards were cold against his bare feet.

‘Hello there.’

He turned and, through the corner of his eye, saw a man standing next to the door to the bedroom. Leaning against the wall, dressed entirely in black. Tall, broad, well built.

‘How are you feeling?’

I recognize you
, he thought, looking across at the tall man, trying to find the tail of the memory. But it wouldn’t come to him. Memories were starting to swim away, disappearing every day – and they weren’t coming back again.

‘Have you lost your voice?’ the tall man said, and stepped away from the door. ‘My name is Andrew, by the way.’

‘Where am I?’ he said, his words indistinct as they passed through his toothless gums.

Andrew nodded. ‘Ah, so you
do
speak.’

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re safe.’

‘Safe?’ He looked around him. ‘From who?’

‘We will get to that.’

‘I want to get to it now.’

Andrew paused. Something flared in his eyes, and then it passed again.

He tried to think. Tried to grasp at another memory.

‘I, uh…’

‘You made a mess of your life,
that’s
what you did,’ Andrew said, his voice harder now. ‘You had nowhere else to go, no one to turn to. So you turned to us.’

‘I turned to Mat.’

Andrew smirked. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘No, you didn’t. Mat doesn’t exist.’

‘What?’ He frowned. ‘I want to see Mat.’

‘Are you
deaf
?’

He looked around the room, towards the door. ‘Wha– where is he?’

‘I told you,’ Andrew said. ‘He doesn–’

‘I want to know where he is!’

In the blink of an eye, Andrew was on him, clamping a huge hand on to his throat. He leaned in so they were almost touching noses, and squeezed with his fingers. ‘You have to earn the right to speak. So, don’t
ever
speak to me like that.’

Andrew shoved him away, and – as he stepped back – a memory came to him: pinned down on the dentist’s chair, looking up at a tall man in a surgical mask.

Andrew
.

‘You…’ he said quietly, touching his gums with his fingers.

‘Don’t say anything you’re going to regret.’

Andrew looked at him.

‘You took out my teeth,’ he said again.

‘We saved your life.’

‘You took out my
teeth
.’

‘
We saved your life
,’ Andrew spat. He took a big step forward again, his hands opening and closing. ‘I’m willing to help you here, but I can just as easily feed you to the darkness.’

The darkness
.

He swallowed. Looked at Andrew.

He meant the devil
.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No,’ he replied, holding up a hand.

Andrew paused, steel showing in his face. ‘I don’t care about your teeth. There are things going on here more important than your
vanity
. Soon you will come to understand the situation you are in – and the situation you were pulled out of.’

He stared blankly at Andrew.

‘I don’t expect you to understand. That’s why I’ve left something there for you to read.’ Andrew nodded at the Bible. ‘I suggest you study the passages I’ve highlighted. Process them. Because you’d better start to appreciate that you’re standing in the middle of this room with your heart still beating in your chest.’

Andrew stepped closer to him.

‘But if you cross us, we will kill you.’

And then he left.

*

He’s in an apartment, two floors up. There’s no furniture, and holes in the floor. He’s sitting at a window, facing Mat. He feels scared.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I have friends who can help you,’ Mat says. ‘They run a place for people like you.’

‘I don’t want to run any more.’

‘You won’t have to. These people – they will help you. They will help you to start again. The police will never find you.’

‘But I don’t know who I can trust.’

‘You can trust me.’

‘I thought I could trust my own family.’

‘You can count on me, I promise you that. These people will help you to disappear, and then they will help you to forget.’

‘I want to forget, Mat.’

Mat shifts closer, places a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know you do. But do me a favour. Don’t call me Mat from now on.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My friends, the people who are going to help you, I’m not Mat to them. Mat is dead now.’ He pauses, looks different for a moment. ‘You can call me Michael.’

When he woke, Andrew was sitting at the bottom of the bed. He brought his knees up to his chest, glanced at Andrew, and then looked out through the top window. Early morning. Or maybe late afternoon. He wasn’t sure any more.

‘Have you read the book I gave you?’ Andrew said.

The book. The book. The
book
. He tried to find the memory, a spark that would lead him to the book, but it wouldn’t come.

‘It was a Bible,’ Andrew replied, ignoring him. ‘The book was a Bible. You remember I gave you a copy of the Bible, right?’

‘No.’

Andrew paused, studied him. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said eventually. ‘We’ve been treating you differently from the others, you know that?’

‘The others?’

‘Your programme is different.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your room, the food we give you, the way we’ve been with you – it’s not our normal way of working. I don’t think you realize how lucky you are.’ Andrew’s eyes shifted left and right, suspicion in them. ‘But I worry about you, you know that? I worry that you think the best way to get better is to fight us.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Am I right?’

He shook his head.

‘Normally, that doesn’t concern me. On our regular programme, we have ways of dealing with problems. But with you here, among this luxury, it’s more difficult.’

Andrew looked at him.

‘Do you want to fight us?’

He shook his head again.

‘Good,’ Andrew said, standing. ‘Because you
don’t
want to fight us. But if I see that look in your face again, I’ll put you on the same programme as everyone else.’

‘And, believe me, you don’t want to be on that programme.’

He lifted his head. He was sitting in the corner of a different room, pitch black. He couldn’t remember how he’d got here. Didn’t know how long he’d been out. His arm was raised to head height and locked to something. Knotted maybe, or clamped. It pinched his skin when he moved, and pin and needles prickled in his muscles.

Where the hell am I?

He could see a thin shaft of moonlight bleeding in through a window further down the wall. And as his eyes started to adjust to the darkness, other shapes emerged: a door, on the far side, closed most of the way; and a white shape, like a sheet, diagonally across from him. There was a breeze coming in from somewhere, and the sheet was moving, billowing up as the wind passed through.

Something specked against his skin. He turned. The wall beside him was wet, almost glistening. There was a liquid on it, dribbling down. He brushed it with his hand. Water. It was running down the walls, all the way along the room.

Next to him, at his eyeline, was a square metal plate, bolts in all four corners, with an iron ring coming out of it. Water was on that too – and something else as well. Darker. It smelt of rust. Maybe copper.

Oh shit, it’s blood
.

He glanced towards the door.

The sheet had moved now. Edged a little closer to him, parallel to the wall. This time, he could make out something beneath the sheet: a shape.

‘Hello?’

The shape twitched.

‘Hello?’

It twitched again. The sheet slid a little, falling towards the floor. And from beneath the white cotton, a face looked out at him.

A girl. Maybe only eighteen.

‘Hello?’ he said again.

She was thin. Her mouth flat and narrow. Her skin pale. In the darkness of the room, she looked like a ghost.

‘Where are we?’

She looked towards the door – a slow, gradual, prolonged movement – and then back to him. But she said nothing.

‘Are you okay?’

No reply. Her head tilted forward a little, as if she was having trouble holding it up. He tried edging away from the wall, as far across the room as he could go.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Keep quiet.’

He looked across at the girl.

She was staring at him now, her eyes light like her skin, her hair matted and dirty. The sheet had fallen away. Beneath, she was only wearing a bra, some panties and a pair of socks.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

She didn’t reply.

‘Can you hear me?’

She twitched, as if someone had jabbed her with the point of a knife, then turned to look out through to the landing again. She stared into the darkness beyond.

‘What’s your name?’

She finally turned back to face him ‘Keep quiet.’

‘What’s going on? Where are we?’

She shook her head.

‘What’s your name?’

She paused. Looked at him. ‘Rose.’

He edged away from the wall again, careful not to stand in the puke this time. The smell in the room was starting to get to him.

‘Listen to me, Rose. I’m going to get us out of here – but you’re going to have to help me. You’re going to have to tell me some things.’

She said something, but he didn’t pick it up.

‘What did you say?’

She pulled the sheet around her again, and faced him. Her arm was also handcuffed to the wall. He noticed there were more rings running the length of the walls on both sides of the room. Equal distances apart.

Then he spotted something else.

A sharp piece of tile, maybe from a bathroom wall, or a roof, about four feet in front of him. It was shaped like a triangle. Jagged on one side. He moved as far away from the wall as he could get, the handcuffs locking in place again, and swept a leg across the floor.

‘What are you
doing
?’ Rose whispered.

He tried to get to the tile again. His boot made better contact this time, and the tile turned over, the noise amplified inside the stillness of the room.

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘He will hear you.’

He looked at her. ‘Who?’

‘The man.’ She glanced out through the door. ‘The man in the mask. The devil.’

I wonder what you taste like, cockroach
.

A shiver passed through him.